IndigoNightOwl commented on Flickr that the sample in yesterday’s post reminded her of ‘reflective colours on bubbles’. Which enriches it for me, tying in to my image of the foamy waves. I hope the cushion will convey an impression of sea and sand, eddies and ripples, and at the same time relate back to shibori patterns and the pure physical qualities of gathered fabric, an exploration of the manipulation of fabric with fibre.

design for cushion front

This lay for a month on my table. Then we needed the table for Christmas so I rolled the not-yet-felt up in the bubblewrap and put it on the shelf where it lay till last weekend, when I got it out and felted it.

This image is of the side that wasn’t visible in my ‘before felting’ photo. I think that side is much more interesting but I will take some pics of the other side tomorrow, if there’s light enough, and put them on my Flickr.

I haven’t quite decided where to take this for my assessment piece. I like the effect around the felted circles very much, both the gathering and the distortion of the resist outlines; and I like the way the circles are connected; but I also like the textured background on the other piece, and the contrast between that and the billowing circles. I’m leaning towards using elements of both; and I think it will be a cushion cover, not a scarf. I may use one of my photos of the summer sea around the island to inspire the colours. Maybe this one.

I just wanted to thank you all for your encouraging comments about this process, and especially Trisha for taking the time to email me as well. I’m sorry I haven’t replied to you all. I struggled a bit through the period leading up to Christmas when Alan was away for three months but I’m feeling more positive now. And I’m really looking forward to the next module, which is ‘textile structures’, and focuses on yarn and tapestry weaving. (I’m just a little obsessed with yarn at the moment after all.) Alongside that, I must choose a personal theme around which to collect visual information into a book, to use in the final design project of the course. Like Emily Dickinson, I “dwell in possibility”…

The textile piece is to form part of an item such as a garment, cushion, bag, wall hanging – it doesn’t have to be the whole item, and you are asked to keep an open mind about the end product for as long as possible.

The piece has to be developed from design work and techniques accumulated throughout the course so far; I gathered a lot of previous work together and did some design development on the computer back in July, and then some felted samples using ideas that came out of that. Gathering felt was one idea that I’ve already blogged about; these are some more experiments with that, before and after felting.

Then I took another of the computer designs and have been playing with it. I tried stitching needled merino before wet felting (using yarn made from the same fibre so some of the yarn would ‘disappear’) and felted half onto muslin and half onto white fleece.

Nothing is really working though and I desperately want to get this module over with since I’ve been stuck on it forever… It’s not that I’m not producing textiles at all - I’ve made several felt scarves over the summer – this is the latest.

I wish I could just use this scarf for my textile piece! I’d be tempted to but there’s no link with any design work, which has to be the starting point, or if there is, it’s inside me somewhere. When I make something in ‘real life’ I usually have an idea to work to – in this case a wrap and the word ‘flame’, or something I’ve seen or heard that’s inspired me, and the materials do the rest. Sometimes I write down words that extend the idea, like a mind map. My imagination tends to be verbal and then tactile. I don’t seem to be able to start visually, with drawings and designs, and then progress to something that means anything to me. When I draw or paint that seems like an end in itself. I don’t understand why I find a visual design process such a struggle, but it feels like there’s a magic casket and I can’t find the key – and it’s frustrating because I’m sure my work would be stronger and more defined if I could get to grips with it.

Anyway, enough moaning, my plan is to persevere with the circles design and to try and interpret it in fabric manipulation (using nuno with silk). Silk painting was one of my favourite bits of the course, so I’ve painted a big piece of silk to sample with and, well, I still prefer the original computer design, but if I don’t compare it with that I am quite pleased with it, apart from the dark splodgy bit in the middle where I used too much salt! I want to see how it looks with the background ruched and the circles felted, and vice versa, and if either works it could be a cushion cover or part of a bag or scarf. That’s Plan A, at any rate…

I’d not come across the Country Channel before but it has some other goodies too, including a short feature on Farfield Mill in Cumbria and a 3-part series called Inspirations – interviews with different textile artists about their inspiration and process.

The other thing that caught my eye this week was the new Galleries feature on Flickr. You can collect up to 18 images by Flickr users "around a theme, an idea or just because". So I’ve made a small celebration of the washing line.

I’ve been inspired to begin learning this

And this

So (slowly) I’m amassing a small haul of slubby wayward yarns that should be useful for the weaving assignment in my next OCA Textiles 1 module, and for felting as well.

I tried a bit of crochet and like the random stripiness a lot…

I am loving spinning! It’s so addictive – colour flowing from one hand to the other, making magic as it goes. I don’t seem to be able to stop. And now I’m dreaming about one of these…

1. i love spinning, 2. wool3, 3. Kromski Sonata, 4. IMG_0272
made with Big Huge Labs Mosaic Maker

This has elements of marbling, ripples distorting the original stripes, creating movement and asymmetry, forming new relationships between the lines.

Influenced by the way shibori captures the stitches into the surface of the fabric visually, even though the thread has been removed and even when the fabric is flat, I thought, what if the effect of stitching into fleece before felting could be captured in a final flat surface?

I laid out 3 gossamer layers of merino – white, then stripes of colour, then a soft pale pinky brown. I intended the top colour just to tone down the layer beneath it but it actually enhanced the surface in a way I didn’t anticipate.

I needled the layers of fleece lightly, just enough to keep them together while I put in the gathering stitches. I have a wonderful little multi-needle tool made by Dianne Stott called the Fabulous Felt-O-Matic which was invaluable for that job; otherwise I’d have wet prefelted the layers as minimally as possible before stitching. This piece started off about 60 x 50cm; shrank to 11 ~ 22cm x 40cm. On a larger scale, it would have to be needled more tightly or wet prefelted before stitching because of the difficulties of handling a very lightly needled fleece in large pieces.

Here’s the stitched and gathered fleece:

To stitch, I used crewel wool in blending shades, and left it in; I could also try a synthetic yarn that would pull out after prefelting, or else a more dramatic yarn that draws attention to itself. I then went though the normal wetting out, felting and fulling process, and this was what happened.

Held up to the light, you can see the way the gathers form thicker and thinner areas of felt – it would be interesting to try with undyed fleece, to maximise this effect. The whole piece is thin but strong; even where there is more fleece it isn’t bulky, because the layers were so thin to start with. If you run your fingers over it you can just feel slight indentations where the gathers were, but against the light the ghosts of the folds appear.

I was very pleased with how the stripes distorted; and interested in the way the top layer moved with the gathers, forming a netted pattern over the surface. I have new ‘what ifs’ now. What if I use wider stripes? What if the top layer contrasts more strongly with the one below. What if I pull up the gathers more tightly, make them closer together, or further apart? What if I start with a grid? What if a larger piece was made up of several smaller pieces, and what if the gathers ran in different directions from one piece to the next? if I want to explore any of my other design ideas before settling on one for the textile piece, I’ll need to keep most of these questions till after the course is finished!

Right now I’m working on producing a textile piece – it can be either a whole or a part of something but the ’something’ has to exist at least as a design, this isn’t just another sample. I spent yesterday reviewing the work I’ve done in the previous couple of modules – Design, Printing and Painting, and Manipulating Fabrics. There’s a lot of ’stuff’ and it’s impossible to lay it all out in one place as they suggest: instead I went through it, pulling out anything I really liked the look of or found interesting as an idea, and then ‘collected’ those piece together in Flickr.

link to Flickr version

Apart from looking for potential in the work I’ve done, I’m also interested in how it impacts on other people, whether it inspires, gives pleasure, moves, communicates or challenges. Only comments really give an idea of that, but this next mosaic is made up of the work that Flickr rates most interesting, which they appear to work out from some combination of number of views, number of comments and how often the work is favourited. There is some overlap with my own preferences, but mostly difference – I should think about the implications of that, but not in this post.

link to Flickr version

Looking for relationships and themes in the collection of potential work from which to develop a further design, visually I see stripes and edges, borderlands where boundaries are in question, colours merging and glowing, textures combining with pattern, grids and intersections, irregular rhythms and flowing movements, circles, spirals and radials.

In terms of materials and techniques I see fabric manipulation, felt, silk, wool, cotton, paint and dye, and the traces of stitch. While that’s partly due to the constraints of being asked to choose material from the most recent modules, it fits with where I feel myself to be. Things that I’m not seeing, but would also include, are actual expressive stitch, text, and elements of collage or layering.

As for subject matter, well, hmmmm, it almost seems that the surface is the subject? something about the interplay of texture and colour, pattern and shape and light. I note that the work that interests other people is much more varied and includes conceptual and representational work as well. Definitely more food for thought there….

I’ve done a whole lot of playing in Photoshop both with the  design source mosaic and with some of the individual images – changing colours, applying filters, wrapping the pixels around displacement maps to create new surfaces. Gathered fabric and shibori make interesting maps to work with and I like the idea of recycling these images of fabric manipulation samples directly back into the design process. I’m ready to start developing the design work into samples now – the ones I may pursue are on Flickr – but here are a couple of them.

I began as one should, making samples for size and colour, and thought I’d worked out how much fleece and silk to use, but something went awry between the sample stage and the finished item – which is big enough for a small winter neckscarf, but not by any means for a wrap!

As time was getting short, I decided just to plunge in and try again, no more time for sampling, so I laid out a lot of fleece, silk and fabric, and this is the result.

The size is right and it drapes beautifully, I really like its bright summery feel and have already worn it as a wrap – I may turn it into a skirt or a waistcoat later on. But I thought that it still wasn’t quite what I was after – too much sunshiny yellow and really too much personality for the dress it was supposed to be wrapping. It would have done, but as there were still a couple of days left, I decided to have another go…

This time I did nuno felting in rosy, leafy colours on a base of silk chiffon, and it turned out just how I wanted it! The last pic is me on the day of the wedding with our lovely daughters.

I’ll be at the Woolfest all day on Friday and would love to say hi to any bloggers who are there too.

The vision is that felters all over the world will join together to display their felt outside their homes, and the theme will be a slice of the colour wheel, from yellow through red. This sounds so exciting:

“People around the world will be surprised by finding yellow felt on doorsteps, orange felt birds in parks, children wearing red felt vests and husbands carrying bright felt bags to work. There will be felt in museums and felt in markets. There will be felt groups organizing open days and workshops. …felt in trees, on cars on bicycles and on mountaintops.”

Information about Felt United, the International Day of Felt and the call to artists is on the Felt United web site.